Legalized Bestiality and the Thanksgiving Turkey
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

By Robert Grillo, Free From Harm
November 2013

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If masturbating males and forcibly inserting semen into the hen's vagina against her will is not rape, then what is it? How can sexual assault be immoral for humans but not for nonhumans who also suffer emotionally and physically - a fact that anyone from a "milker" to an animal behaviorist will readily acknowledge?

Bestiality is defined by Webster's as 'sexual activity between a person and an animal,' and all meat in the United States comes from precisely that relationship. Why is it illegal, deviant, and cause for imprisonment for some farmer to engage in bestiality inside a barn if he's doing it for personal enjoyment, but perfectly legal for that same farmer to do it as part of 'standard agricultural practices' used to put animal corpses on our nation's dinner tables? It's a glaring contradiction that just doesn't add up.
- Bruce Friedrich, from his article "Does Eating Meat Support Bestiality?"

Since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, let's talk turkeys.

Domestic turkeys have been bred to be so large, they cannot mate naturally, so hens are forcibly "inseminated" (the industry euphemism) several times. Males are masturbated by arousing their phallus to get them to ejaculate semen. A "milker" at a turkey breeding facility in Missouri describes his job: "I have never done such hard, dirty, disgusting work in my life: 10 hours of pushing birds, grabbing birds, wrestling birds, jerking them upside down, pushing open their vents, dodging their panic-blown excrement and breathing the dust stirred up by terrified birds" (source: United Poultry Concerns).

On the question of masturbation and insemination, a UK turkey farmer named Paul Kelly told The Independent: "'It's been happening for 80 years.'" "The turkey was already upside down in Paul's hands. He swiftly uncovered a hole amidst the feathers, gave it a couple of tweaks, and there was the turkey semen, looking like a bit of crumbly old toothpaste. 'We take this,' said Paul, 'and suck it into a rubber tube. It's then blown into the vagina.' He picked up a nearby turkey hen, and revealed the vagina. When he put the bird down, she fluttered her feathers and walked off. Kelly: 'What she's doing with her feathers - that's called rattling. It proves she likes being handled'" (source: Andrew Martin, from his article, The Turkey Fights Back).

If masturbating males and forcibly inserting semen into the hen's vagina against her will is not rape, then what is it? How can sexual assault be immoral for humans but not for nonhumans who also suffer emotionally and physically - a fact that anyone from a "milker" to an animal behaviorist will readily acknowledge?

What about "humane" turkey? Watch this video from Vern Iverson, a turkey farmer in Yelm, WA who has years of experience using alleged "humane" methods of slaughter. Brace yourself. It's graphic and hideous, but painfully honest about how utterly desensitized and in denial Iverson, and the humane meat movement in general, is about the agony they cause animals.

So, let me ask you a frank question. Will your Thanksgiving meal be based on rape and murder or will you be celebrating a life of compassion this year? Check out these turkey-free meal ideas.

Thank you once again for all of your support!

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